I think a piece or 2 of my wood has a wasp colony in it. I'm not finding any adults just freshly hatched juveniles.... This is about the 10th one I've found...
We have no Hickory trees in this part of South Dakota......unless they also inhabit other trees......and can tolerate our cold, long winters.
Yes, that is either a Hickory borer or Locust borer, very similar, the locust borer only does black locust, the hickory borer does several species of trees including Honey Locust. I had them bad a few years ago in my basement wood supply but they don't really cause any harm to your home. Once they warm up in the wood, they come out and fly around and when they can't find moist or live wood to lay eggs in, they just croak on the floor or on your workbench or in the wife's Easter decarations, etc... google them, several web sites explain all about them.
I had sent pictures of them to my neighbor that cuts wood with me and his wife was flipping out about them so I sent them a video of one running up my pant leg. John said she screamed for 5 minutes. I had to call her to tell her I was OK... LOL
I’ve had similar, if not the same bugs show up in my basement. And I have never had any hickory, or black locust that I know of and the honey locust I just got done with won’t come in for 3 years. They didn’t really seem to be much of a nuisance. not to derail this thread, but… Yesterday when I was bringing wood into the house I got to thinking about these varieties of bugs that you people talk about that make a mess in the wood piles. I have/had something that makes a mess of pine and to a lesser degree cedar and hackberry. All these bugs seem to have names ( at least commonly referred to) related to the wood species that they attack. I’m in a very open sparsely timbered area. I have maybe 6 mature and relatively healthy pines (ponderosa?) in my back yard. I doubt that there’s a hickory tree within 150+ miles. Don’t know of any honey locust around and the nearest black locust I know about are at least a good mile away. Where do these bugs come from? How do they find their preferred wood? What sustains the population when there’s no suitable habitat ( wood pile) for them? PS… another reason to like elm, the bugs don’t!
Exactly...these guys all wanna scoff at me when I say I got all kinds of critters in the house when I tried to bring wood in...uh huh, see I'm not the only one...
Ok, after finding more of these things crawling around, i found it on Google. It's called a Red-headed Ash Borer. Some of you guys were right!! I just couldn't get rid of them it seems. As long as they don't start digging into my house like termites....
Glad you figured it out. There must be dozens of species depending on where you are and what trees you have. Typically harmless other than the "scare" factor of crawly, flying, insects... I hate bugs, but cats love 'em. I get a few bugs in every season, but nothing has "infected" the house yet.
There are many, many types of borers. Out east here, besides the invasive Emerald Ash Borer & Asian longhorn beetle, the most common are members of the flathead wood borer family like the painted hickory and locust borer. These beetles have over 150 members in their family and are often called jewel beetles. They feed on most any hardwood tree. They are also a great reason to not store wood inside if you don’t like extra critters in your house.
